My review of my iPhone 3G

Part I: The Quest

I’ve had the phone for less than two days, so I expect to update this ‘review’ as time passes. But I have explored most of the functions and performance enough to give what are strictly my opinions. I’d be happy to answer or try out any feature for someone just now shopping. I now have 2 3G iPhones.

I should start of by saying, that of course this is a little biased, because as anyone who just laid out $200 for a new phone would feel, they need to justify their purchase. I am guilty, but I’m also realistic, so I hope that comes through. Also, this is my first smartphone: except for the BB curve, I have only had Nokia’s and Motorola’s. See my profile to the left for the phones that I’ve had.

What is important to me? I want quality photos, email, web browsers, very good screen quality, solid construction, SMS and MMS. I can fudge on some of them, not needing them all of the same features with my previous phones. I also wanted ease of synching calendar, contacts, etc with Outlook.

But the following things are the most important to me:
RF signal quality,
Audio send and receive quality, and
Battery life.

It should get me through the day since I charge daily, but it would be great if I can get through 2 days or more, in a pinch, when that happens.

So why did I chose the iPhone at all? I wanted 3G, WiFi, the same quality screen as my Nokia 6131, and the GSM and 3G bands had to cover all USA and European frequencies, plus Japan. Also this time around I did not want to spend a fortune. I seriously looked at the Nokia E51, but it lacked the US 3G band and was too much money since it was not carried by ATT plus the screen smaller than my 6131.
And finally, I listen to audiobooks a lot (www.audible.com) on my ipod, garmin and mp3 player, plus some songs. I wanted to combine that into one device. The iphone does that for me.

vf

 

Part II: IMO, the pro and cons, basic performance.

Let me cut to the quick and dirty. The phone is gorgeous. The 16 million color screen is very large and crisp. I can see it very easily in daylight, unlike my 6131. I’m amazed by that.

So in quick summary:

Some of the Pros: Basics

Screen is second to none, can be seen in daylight.
Call quality excellent: much better than my 6131, call and received.
RF signal based on bars will seem low, but this phone give quality calls regardless
Battery life: a little early to tell. Phone goes between 2 and 3G. First day, with partial charge went from 9am to 11pm, until it redlined. But that is with near constant use. Not too different from my experience with the Nokia. I’m giving it lots of use the second day, still about1/2 left after 15 hours of use. WiFi always on, and being used constantly. 3G too.

Let me explain. In my house I’m getting 1 or 2 bars, either 2 or 3G. I placed the phone in field test mode, and 3 bars was ~89dBm, 2 bars 93dBm, and 1bar ~ 97 to 101dBm. All numbers are negative of course. I made a call from the house phone to iPhone, iPhone to iPhone, and listened or talked at both end. The voice audio was crystal clear!!! And that was with 1 or 2 bars. Like a landline. Any concerns that I read about the 1st gen iPhone, seem to not apply here. Do not let the bars fool you. I found little or no difference between low or full bars here. This particular test was in 2G, plain old GSM.

Other:
Slim and fits nicely in pocket. Back plastic screen is a smudge magnet…get a back case if that drives you nuts. Also the Crystal clear screen protector takes nothing away from the looks or performance.

The synch with Outlook was flawless. Setting up gmail and earthlink mail was much easier than any Nokia I ever had. I was amazed. Camera is high quality, but there is no option to go BW, sepia, Crop, etc. I miss that, but it can be done later with photoshop, etc. No deal breaker here.

MMS, true there is no mms. Also, there is no way to reduce the 2megapixel size to 640 by 480 in the phone. I thought this would be a problem. I sent a iPhone photo to the old Moto Razr, didn’t go through (see note below). However I sent it to my 6131 and it arrived in the MMS mailbox fine. I did this by emailing from the iPhone to xxxxxxxxxx@mms.att.net. On the Razr, although it didn’t go to the phone, after a few hours, it showed up in my wife’s email address (@ full resolution) that was on file with cingular (I guess). She saw the photo on the home PC. Go figure that one.

SMS is fun on the phone.

One can turn off 3G or WiFi separately. Also it will fetch mail every 15min, minimum. It also auto fetches whenever the mail appl is opened. Work well enough, not to need push mail.

Audio volume is good for my very old ears. Even in the mall, it worked better than the 6131.

aGPS worked great. As you drive it shows you were you are on the map continuously. Accuracy is very, very good.

Camera quality is better than my 1.3 Mpixel Nokia. Very happy with this.

Definitely it lacks some of the options in some applications. I already mentioned about the less than useful options in the camera mode. But so far, these have been minor, and not a show stopper.

That is all for now, but Part III is next. However, since the software is not too different from the 1st gen., there are not too many surprises there.

Bluetooth. Haven't tried it yet, but it is limited for hands free from what I read. Not for transfering files. I guess that is because iTunes does not use bluetooth. So back to the cable. Don't like that , but it does charge the phone too. oh well.

Overall,it has the most of the same features regarding contacts, phone call usage, etc as the Nokia OS had. Just different. Very intuitive.

Vf

P.S. there are lots of free appls that do things like voice recorder, radio, etc.

 

Internet browsing is pretty fast. Mostly I am on WiFi at the home, for a few hours on the Apple Store WiFi (while waiting in line), and then a local coffee shop. It is pretty seamless, defaulting to WiFi first if it is available.

The trick with keyboard texting is this: When you place your finger on a key, and it is the wrong one, just slide your finger over to the correct one. As long as you don't pick your finger up, you haven't chosen a letter yet. Also, the magnifying glass (press and hold) help see where the cursor is.

I'm still not very good at it, but learning. But that brings up another point. Every phone that I've owned before, around the 2nd year, one key starts getting sticky. Like the end key, etc. I'm hoping that with the touch screen, that mechanical problem will disappear.
Will see

 

Thanks. Also, if you start learning not to look at your fingers too much,but just type and look at what the Apple software thinks the word should be, accept by hitting the space, texting goes much faster.

I've moved on to almost two hands now. I just discovered that in addition to the calendar, the apple os alarm function allows for multiple alarm times, and repeating. Good feature.

 

No, not at all Gamer03

Part III - Signal Stregth

To answer Gamer03’s question and after reading 9 pages of posts on Signal Quality or Strength on HoFo forums, I did some technical measurements.

First off, 9 pages of posts on HoFo and only ‘bars’ are used for comparison. This is garbage information.

Yes, my observations are that the signal level by bars is slightly lower than my ‘bars’ on previous Nokias. BUT the call quality is more than excellent, even with 1 bar. Better than my Nokia 6131. My kid mentions that she is getting calls through (with the iPhone) in rural areas that were not possible with the other phone (BB Curve).

Ok some real numbers. I learned how to place the iPhone in Field Test Mode. It then displays a calibrated signal strength in minus dBm or decibels below one milliwatt of received signal. This is a standard calibrated unit of measure to a bench top instrument.

I dusted off my Nokia 6340 and placed it in Field Test mode also.

2G

In my home, the iPhone and the Nokia gave the same number of dBMs and, they actually tracked each other quite well as I moved from room to room and ground floor to 2nd floor. The received signal ranged from -97 to -86 dBm.

So there is no difference in received signal strength between the two phones. Period. Their Bars are different, and that is the problems: bars are not calibrated to any standard.

The RF signal received on the iPhone is just fine.

3G

Most of the complaints hovered around 3G. So I have no 3G phone to compare the 3G iPhone to. However, I could do this.

In my home, I agree that the 3G signal is weaker than the 2G signal. So I leave it in 2G. But going downtown or in the Mall, etc, I get full ‘bar’s of 3G signal. No problem.

Therefore, I went to an area where I had good 3G signal. I placed the iPhone in Field Test Mode. The signal strength in dBm were identical for both 3G and 2G. No difference!

So I would conclude that there is nothing inferior with the 3G reception on the iPhone.

Judge more by whether or not your placed telephone calls go through and are clear, NOT bars. Imagine if our car or home FM radios had ‘bars’ on them? You would find the bars all over the place, but the FM signal quite clear.

vf

 

Part IV – more thoughts pro and con

First I like to say something about cases. Get at least the silicone back cover. The 3G phone is curved at the edges and the smooth plastic back make this thing handle like a bar of soap. I ejected it from my hand once…onto my lap already.

The dermashot cases by incipio are really nice. Price includes a clear screen cover too. myIncipio.com | iPhone 3G Accessories

On key entry, I’m finding the Apple predictive dictionary much better than Nokia’asThe trick is to type with your fingers, look at the keyboard and also the guessed word. It is so good, it allows one to be sloppy. Trust it and just let the ‘Force’ guide you, and it works well. So says the jeteye. Movement of the cursor with the magnifying glass is cute, but it should also have a simple left/right arrow key too.

Some cool things. The proximity sensor knows when the phone is at your face. The screen goes dark, but when you move the phone to look at the screen, it brightens again. You can do the same thing by waving your hand over the phone (of course it only works in ‘call’ mode). That would annoy me with the Nokia, the screen would dim to save battery juice, but then I had to hit a key to ‘wake’ it up.

Multiple alarms. Besides the calendar, one can set many alarms, have them repeat daily, weekly, etc. Oh, and the volume is quite high, at least for me.

Nice switch on the side to quickly go from vibrate to ringer. But there are no profiles like Nokia. But one can set the ringing volume from the side, and that works for me.

Who needs 3G? the phone guides seamlessly from Edge or 3G to Wifi, and there is so much wifi around these days, who needs 3G? Most of the time, I’m not out on the street, but in an area where there is wifi. It just keeps finding them and lets me know new ones that it sets up easily into memory.

Push Mail. Forget Mobile Me. If you want free BB like push mail sign up for a yahoo or ymail account. It pushes mail to the phone in a snap. I have had problems getting it to work all the time. I just tried 4, only got 4. Inconsistent, but I’d keep my eye on this option. It pushes on the average about 1 to 3 seconds after sending from my PC. Maybe too many people are trying. But when it works, it’s great. If you need it, instead of just pull mail every 15min, 30 min or 1hour.

The speaker is quite loud and of good quality compared to the tinny things I’ve had before. Not stereo.

BT seems only for headsets. Paired with the Moto HS700 fine. My Dell saw the iphone but could not pair with it. So no IR, and no BT for file transfers. Cable only. Can charge via USB though.

Battery life. Still doing tests and playing But it seems that one should not expect more than 24- 35 hours out of the iPhone using the various features. Not like advertised, but it gets me through one day. So far I have not been able to turn everything off and just run 2G mode. I keep wanting to ‘play’. I feel that Apple figure you will have the phone docked a lot. Probably true.

Calculator. Standard one until you rotate the phone 90 degrees. Then it turns into a full scientific calculator - Charylee you will like this. RPN is also available as an app.

P.S. just got the 4th ymail.


No voice dialing at all. But it has a favorite list. Go to it or double hint the home button and it will take you there. You can edit the list.

I see a way to import SIM contacts but none to export. Unless it automatically keeps a back up for you. Of course one can use outlook. So in many ways the phone is feature rich, but no one to one with the Nokia OS. They do it 'their' way.

GAMES: this is cool. Download a game, like a driving one. control the car not with left/right buttons, just tilt the iphone like a steering wheel. The internal accelerometer does the work. Very fun!

 

Thanks, and congrats on the new phone. The field test mode is turned on by entering *3001#12345#* and pressing the call button. You will see the bars replaced by a minus dBm number. To exit, just press the 'Home' button. You will see the numbers move around, so you will need to mentally average them.

I'm trying those tips today. I'm not sure about #1 If GPS is off,it seem to go on automatically when you try to locate yourself in google maps. But I can then go back to settings and turn it off. Are the other forums saying this does not really work?

Number 4 is an important one. The Auto brightness setting does not really adjust the screen over its full range. The out of the box setting is full or near full screen brightness. I'm turning it down to 20% also.

I've had one freeze so far, I think. I got to WA ok and made my first post there last friday to Walkguru. Otherwise it seems fine.
Have fun!

 

By the way, excuse my tardiness in thanking you all for the nice compliments. This 'thanking' button is new to me.

dmapr, Gamer03, Walkguru, Jay, Ddeere2 and MobileMike, all thanks for the nice replys.

come join the iPhone club!


Steven2420, enjoy and let me know how it is going. You don't have much time until some other new phone comes out -JK

Charlyee is noticeably absent. I think she is not reading, so as not to be tempted. Seriously, thanks for the few PM's. BTW, my ipod dance is on U tube, but U have to find it. No hints from me.

Right now, I only wish the battery was a bit better, but what did i really expect? Batteries don't improve, only electronics power usage. And I'm now watching movies with the thing. It's trying to do so much more than my 6131. WiFi is interesting. When the phone goes into sleep mode,it seems to shut down. At least the icon is gone until the phone wakes up.

But one thing that all are saying, is how good the call clarity is. It's remarkable. I should add that he earpiece speaker is HUGE. No little button to find the sweet spot.

P.S. I will be heading out next week to some international vacation spots. The first test offshore for the phone and maybe gps.

P.P.S. I am in Boston today and outside the 3G signal is strong and steady. Inside it can disapper. So I am using mostly 2G which is just fine. I'm turning off everything and trying to run like my 6131 for comparisons. One thing missing. Missed calls are displayed on the Home page, but when in sleep mode it does give a flash, etc like the Nokia did periodically. I need to touch the Home key, it will wake up for a few seconds show me the date and time, and the missed message icons.
But a nice feature is that it will show the text of an SMS message., so that is better than saying I have one missed sms. Less keystrokes to see if the messsge is important.

 

Thanks boboito. I don't use the speaker that much, but I would say that it is as loud as the 6131, and to me, the sound is fuller, with more bass. Certainly the speaker grill is much bigger on the iPhone and when using the iphone as an ipod (in speaker phone), I think it sound pretty good for it's size and much, much better than the 6131 playing MP3 files.

One thing that is coming through elsewhere (ie HoFo) is the call clarity is very good. I hear it and my daughter does too (she has a blackberry curve). The earpiece certainly has enough volume to be use in a busy mall.

So I hate to admit that don't know how to perform the speed check. I can do it here in Boston and the later in CT. Just give me the secret LOL. To tell you the truth, i'm using wifi more.

 

Battery life. So i finally did a discharge the phone turn off last night. Then I recharged. I went beyond the 20% and 10 % warning alert.

The iPhone has this neat monitor (maybe all smartphones do). It tells you stats from the time of last full charge.

So my battery icon is now a little more than 1/2 full. It seem more linear than the Nokia that would say full charge then rapidly go down afterwards.

Anyhow the stats associated with little more than 1/2 full are:

Usage time: 3 hours. It says it mean usages as in calls, emails, texting, etc.
Standby time: 16. 5 hours. Basically the time since last full charge
Call time: 55 minutes. Basically call time

Now I tried to use the phone like a Nokia 6131. No wifi, no 3G, no auto check mail, no GPS. Screen brightness at 25%. I'm talking, using SMS quite a bit too. Some email checking

So I'm estimating that I will get, well I'm not even going there. I will see how it works out. Basically I trying to compare to what I had be fore, the way I would use the 6131 and get 2 to 2.5 days out of it.

 

Speed Tests (Indoors, outdoors later this morning).

I did the speed test at testmyiphone.com I'm indoors where the signal level is normally a few bars down from just outside. I will try it outside later this morning.

Here is what I get in Boston. I'll do Connecticut later in the week.

iPhone 3G

Edge
0.17 Mbps
256Kb transfered in 12 seconds

WiFi
5.26 Mbps
6912 Kb transfered in 10 seconds

3G
1.99 Mbps
1536 Kb transfered in 6.3 seconds

and for the fun of it, I ran the same test on my Dell PC running wireless. It recognized that I was not on an iPhone.

1st time
0.25Mbps
2nd time
2.44 Mbps

So what does that mean? My iPhone is faster than my Dell??

 

Ok. I repeated these tests outside about 7am in Boston. Outside I get 5 or full bars in 2 and 3G (sorry, I didn't measure dBm, but this is a good signal clearly). The previous tests above were indoors where I had roughly 3 bars.

2G
0.27Mbps

3G
1.76Mbps

So about the same, a little more for 2G Edge, a little less for 3G. But each time one does the test, slightly different results are received. Plus the indoor test was done around 4:30am, probably less wireless traffic, if that influences the speeds.

So what data speeds does att claim??

 

Battery status, con't :

Continuing my test to mimic battery lifetime under my normal use vs what I had with the 6131. I will need to synch pretty soon today, so that will start charging the battery again.
So this is where I am since the last full recharge. The battery icon is currently less than1/2 but greater than 1/3.

Usage time: 3 hr. 41 min
Standby time: 1 day 3 hours
Call time: 55 minutes
Data downloaded: 20 Mb
Data uploaded: 618 Kb

Plus a few short times on 3G and Wifi to run speed tests, but otherwise no 3G no WiFi, no GPS running, checking email manually, but not much, some small web browsing, again no too much. This is my normal pattern.

I don’t really understand the Usage number. I mean I understand it, but it seems too high. I did my normal texting, but 3 hours is high. I guess it means waking up to see the display, etc.
One thing is that I know of no way to set EDGE to ‘use only as needed’. It’s always on. On the Nokia that was one way to save battery life.

But what I have so far fits my life style well enough. I charge daily, plus with the w ire synching, it will charge the battery during the day too. So about the same as the Nokia if I estimate from the battery meter status this morning.

So I’m ok with the iPhone. And I figure since it is easy to turn on 3G or wifi, I will leave it off until needed. The data speeds here in Boston are very good, and what is ATT says we should get ~ 1.9Mbps.

By the way, on Wikipedia, it states that the best speeds are achieved while stationary and that while moving, ie in a car, the speeds will drop down to ~350 of kbps. Didn’t know that.